Crybaby Crosby Wins Again During Baseball’s Brutal Times of Viewership

It’s been a week since Sidney Crosby got to hoist the cup over his ugly mug for the third time in his career. It’s also been a week since P.K. Subban couldn’t live up to the hype after the bad breath comments Crosby gave him. It wasn’t all on Subban of course, there were many blown chances for the Predators this series, including not being able to win a game on the road, all while Matt Murray was playing with a torn hamstring…yikes. The final score of game six was 2-0, with former Predator, Patric Hornqvist, getting revenge against his old team scoring with 1:28 to go in the third, an empty netter sealed the deal. Pittsburgh had their celebratory parade in downtown Pittsburgh on Wednesday, where a record 645,000 fans showed up for the first back-to-back champs in 20 years.

Now that the season has come to an end, a series of trades, rumors, and guesstimated picks for the expansion draft and entry draft start to accumulate. One big trade has already gone down between the Montreal Canadiens and the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Bolts sent young, promising, and former first round pick Jonathan Drouin to the Habs in exchange for some picks and the Canadiens first round selection from last years draft. This is a big pick up for the Habs, Drouin brings speed, which Montreal is always building their team around, along with a quick shot and soft hands. It will be interesting to see where Drouin is slotted in the starting lineup, my guess would be line two, but don’t be surprised to see him play alongside Max Pacioretty on the powerplay (pretty deadly when you add in Brendan Gallagher up front along with Shea Weber and Radulov on the back end).

Drouin and Tampa have had their ups and downs since he was drafted. A lot of questions surrounding his commitment to the team and improving his game were heard from GM Steve Yzerman down to coach John Cooper. You have to imagine the Bolts are happy to get Drouin out of town, but they also must worry about losing one of their top players in Tyler Johnson through the expansion draft, which leads to my next point.

As many fans know, and for those who don’t, the NHL will be adding the 31st franchise to the league, the Vegas Golden Knights. An interesting place for the NHL to place a franchise, but they needed to add a Western Conference team, now the Eastern Conference only has one extra team on their side. Anyways, each NHL team must submit a sheet of players they wish to protect on their roster and there are two ways to do this. 1. Each team selects seven forwards, three defenseman, and a goaltender to protect or option 2., eight skaters (forwards or defenseman or a combination of the two) and a goaltender. All players who are currently signed by their clubs and have no movement clauses are ineligible to be selected by Vegas, all first year and second year players, as well as unsigned draft picks, are ineligible also.

As a Bruins fan, I fear that Don Sweeney is going to choose to let young defenseman Colin Miller hang in the balance as a possible fit for Vegas, and in exchange, the B’s hang on to defenseman Kevan Miller. I give Kevan credit, he has shown a lot of improvement in his offensive game the past year and a half (basically since Sweeney gave him a 4 year extension, ugh). However, Kevan still lacks the ability to create long ice passes, typically it leads to a turnover or an icing, and defensively yes he is a freight train and taking a hit from him can’t be fun, but his defensive positioning always bites him in the ass. Colin, on the other hand (whom the Bruins traded for from LA when they sent them Milan Lucic (double ugh) even though he isn’t the same player anymore), is a bit younger but has a cannon of a shot from the point. He’s faster, has better hockey IQ, but he also has defensive lapses of his own. Colin has high potential value, so I hope Sweeney keeps him, any GM can find a Kevan Miller type player anywhere.

I expect some big moves to come this offseason for all teams, I believe there will be a lot of “same face, new place” scenarios. I don’t want to make any assumptions yet though, let’s see who Vegas gets to start their team.

The Bruins better be ready to add a top 6 (preferably top 3) right winger to pair up with Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron, and they must also add a reliable defenseman, one that can shoot. Zdeno Chara is likely entering his final year and the Bruins core of Bergeron, Marchand, Krejci, Chara, and Rask aren’t getting any younger. The puck is in your end now Don Sweeney, so are you going to pass the puck? Or take initiative and take that puck all the way down the ice? I hope for the ladder.

So now that hockey and basketball are over, the only thing we are left to watch is baseball. I love baseball, grew up playing and watching, and now I’m your average men’s league softball slugger. I still enjoy watching baseball but comparing it to watching a hockey or basketball game is like comparing the tortuous and the hare.

Anybody can tune into a local radio station, a podcast of a baseball writer, or even just talking with someone who grew up watching baseball in the 70’s even up through the early 2000’s and you can hear the same analysis of the MLB games of the past. The games on average would take about 2 hours and 30 minutes, key word on average. That’s about the same duration as an NHL or NBA game, the NFL has TV times set for 3 hours but those game take longer at times, but that’s a different story for another day. It’s ridiculous how much actual “football” people watch on Sunday’s. But sit down and talk to your mother, father, uncle, grandparents, they will tell you the baseball games then compared to today are much more drawn out.

The MLB is aware of this issue, hence why they have added a pitch clock and have limited their TV timeouts and their durations a bit, but is it the game itself or is it the players?

You tell me. It’s mixed. Some players take their time doing EVERYTHING, the walk to the plate is slow, look around the stands, touch your helmet, grab your cup, adjust the batting gloves, then dig in. By then the pitcher is already focused on what he’s gonna throw for the next pitch. But it’s not just batters, pitchers can be just as bad. Take their cap off run their fingers through their lettuce, grab the top part of the jersey on the shoulder of the throwing arm, walk around the mound and play with the rosin bag, then take 10 seconds to choose ONE pitch, just as annoying to read about as it is to watch.

Then you have other players that just work fast and get that the game takes too long, they don’t want to be at the ballpark until midnight on a summer night with a day off the next calendar day. Look at Chris Sale (not a cop out because I’m a Red Sox fan but having the ability to watch him every five days helps), he gets the ball from the catcher and immediately is back on the hill. The same could be said for Sale’s counterpart from Thursday night against Phillies starter, Nick Pivetta. Both Sale and Pivetta worked extremely fast, and by the time the middle of the sixth inning arrived it was only 8:32pm. That’s a little more than halfway through the game and it’s before 9:00. That’s baseball I can watch night in and night out.

But can the MLB really stop the players? Most likely not, they are the ones who are bringing in all the viewers and the revenue, but the MLB can try and discipline the players, which may lead to some unhappy ball players. Give the fans what they want and what they deserve, before the viewership on TV turns to dust. I’ll miss watching hockey, it’s the best sport to watch, but it’s summer time now and I’ll tune in on a nightly basis when Chris Sale takes the hill every five days.

Written by Nick Gendreau